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Adam DavisJul 8 '14 at 13:51

2 Answers
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Working my way through the broken English, they don't seem to mean "charging" as with electricity, but rather just using that as an analogy.

As far as I can tell, this is how it works

You connect the WifiEX device to your home network

Through their satellite network, other people connect through your device (and all other such devices currently in "at home" mode), using it as an interface between their satellite network and the internet at large, in a peer-to-peer arrangement. While it's doing this, you build up a credit, which they're calling a "charge", up to a maximum of 10GB.

When you disconnect it from your home network, it then switches to "mobile" mode and you connect through their satellite network to others devices for internet and use your built up credit ("charge") to have internet on the go.

I do not pretend to understand how they think this kind of system is at all feasible. Mobile satellite internet systems do exist (e.g. Iridium's GO! ), but the client-side hardware for that is about 3 times this thing's price, and I can't even find out what the actual service costs, though I suspect it comes in around "You don't even want to know", and the main cost on such a system is the satellite network (putting stuff in orbit is decidedly not cheap. Putting a single Iridium satellite into orbit costs in the vicinity of $13 million US. And Iridium's network has 72 (66 active and 6 spares) such satellites. For those playing at home, that's nearly a billion dollars in launch costs, not counting the cost of the satellites themselves), not the downlink. And they're not charging for the satellite bandwidth (which networks operators like Iridium charge lots for, as they need to make back the aforementioned network costs. Just voice appears to cost somewhere around $0.83/minute.), but rather only using customers to save on their downlink bandwidth.

Personally, it smells like a scam and going by the decided lack of funding they're getting, pretty much everyone else in the world also thinks so.

Some of the information contained in this post requires additional references. Please edit to add citations to reliable sources that support the assertions made here. Unsourced material may be disputed or deleted.

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@ChrisW - Your theory of it being a cache doesn't align with their talk about the device connecting to satellites.
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Compro01Jul 7 '14 at 15:26

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Worth noting that it's using "Flexible Funding", which means every dollar they raise is theirs, scam or not.
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BobsonJul 7 '14 at 16:11

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I found a reseller advertising $1.39/minute for iridium data. Wikipedia indicates that while compression is used automatically, the raw data rate is only 2.4k. "You don't even want to know" sounds about right.
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Dan NeelyJul 7 '14 at 17:05

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@ChrisW they claim that it will work even on the airplane. If it is pure cache then you won't get anywhere. Want to Google? Nope, not cached. The best you can cache is pages from sites you visit regularly based on your history. It will be awful browsing experience. Only preloaded content, no dynamic sites, no IMs. It is either scam or people behind it have no idea what they are doing.
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AndreyJul 7 '14 at 21:26

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I am dissatisfied with this answer. Firstly, it speculates what might be meant, without showing that this interpretation is correct. Secondly, if this interpretation was correct, it seems likely that the web-site would have a very different message and that the updates would have been clarified rather than made it more murky. This answer hasn't ruled out that the claim is technological gibberish, acting as a Rorschach test for technologists to project what they must really mean.
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Oddthinking♦Jul 8 '14 at 9:29

Being charitable, it sounds like its some kind of Wifi enabled portable cache. Basically, a dedicated wifi connected drive that handles arbitrary data which it streams back like a raw tcp/ip connection. You fill it up with 10gigs worth of data and then take it on the road.

There use of the terms "internet key" and "internet dongle" suggest places like Eastern Europe where a hardwire device providing encrypted system identification are required to access internet service providers. Those areas also usually don't have reliable of high bandwidth cell based internet access.

"Satellite" sounds a lot more like "server" in context within the FAQ.

I think "charging" probably is intended to describe a distributed/swarm based processing system running across all the total customer-base's main computing devices. The caching system likely requires a lot of processing and likely compression and that's a lot of computing power. By requiring all customers to donate some CPU time to the task, they can get a lot of free computing power.

The line "If you turn off the "Surf & Charging" addon you will charge WiFiEX faster. " doesn't make much sense for a straight caching system but would if downloads are competing with distributed computing data exchange.

On the other hand, I wouldn't plunk down any money on this I wasn't prepared to lose.

Some of the information contained in this post requires additional references. Please edit to add citations to reliable sources that support the assertions made here. Unsourced material may be disputed or deleted.

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"Internet Dongle" is used (at least) in UK as term for mobile broadband USB modems (though it probably does not clarify the page much).
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Maciej PiechotkaJul 7 '14 at 23:31

Like the other answer, this reads like an attempt to interpret technological gibberish as a plausible idea, without evidence that this is the best interpretation. The claim that caching requires a lot of processing/compression and that it is feasible to share this task out needs empirical evidence.
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Oddthinking♦Jul 8 '14 at 9:34